Salem Mayor gives up fight against state hospital site

by
The Associated Press

Monday February 18, 2008, 2:35 PM

SALEM -- Mayor Janet Taylor has given up her bid to block a new state hospital building in central Salem.

She says she'd like to see the state build a smaller one, but officials say her objections are too late and would be too costly.

Saying Salem gets too many people coming out of the institution, Taylor argued that a new state hospital ought to be put in the city's outskirts.

But she was criticized for her stand after a forum last week sponsored by the state Department of Human Services, and most members of Salem's legislative delegation rejected her position.

Taylor wrote an e-mail to the Salem Statesman Journal saying she'd accepted siting the new hospital as planned, but she urged the state to prune the project from 620 beds to 320 beds or fewer, with another new psychiatric facility north of Marion County, possibly in the Portland area.

"We need new mental hospitals in Oregon, and I accept that one needs to be in Salem -- just not so large," Taylor said. "I also hope they will build a 320-bed hospital to the north where several cities and counties are desperate for relief of the impacts on their medical emergency rooms and jails where they are dealing with drug addicts and mental crisis (calls) on a daily basis."

Construction of the Salem project is planned to start in 2009, with completion targeted for 2011. The state also plans a 360-bed facility in Junction City in Lane County.

Reducing the size of the Salem project and adding a new site in the Portland area would be costly, legislators said. During the planning phase, Republican Sen. Jackie Winters of Salem said, Portland was ruled out because the land would be too expensive.

The state mental hospital has long been described as crumbling. Recently, a U.S. Justice Department report criticized the quality of the care given patients.

"We've got a full-blown crisis before us," said Republican Rep. Vicki Berger said. "It's going to take time to dig ourselves out of the hole we have dug ourselves into. Everybody needs to be kind of pulling on the same oars."